You’ve gotta hand it to the Minnesota Vikings; they’re such catastrophic playoff underachievers that they didn’t even get to enjoy the Minneapolis Miracle for a full week before the greatest play in franchise history turned into a crushing albatross that will define the failure of the 2017 season and all the ones that came before.

Now, Keenum-to-Diggs will only serve as a reminder of what came next. The magnificent game-winning catch that launched a thousand nicknames, inspired countless YouTube reaction videos and sent Minnesota into a state of ecstasy not seen since the days of Purple Rain is now a gut-wrenching reminder of futility, even worse than the former bellwethers of Vikings ineptitude – missed field goals by Gary Anderson and Blair Walsh.

(USA TODAY Sports Images)

Now, anytime the Diggs highlight gets shown, the fond memory of the week of rapture it brought will be quickly replaced by the sorrow of the NFC championship, when Minnesota, just 60 minutes away from playing the first home game in Super Bowl history, took an instant 7-0 lead on the Eagles and then allowed 38 unanswered points in a game that culminated with Vikings players getting in fights, coach Mike Zimmer petulantly declining an interview with Fox and Eagles fans – classy as ever – mocking the Vikes’ Skol chant. No rational Vikings fan thought the game was anywhere close to over when the team went up 7-0 but even the most pessimistic ones had to have the thought float through their head before pushing it out, not wanting to jinx a franchise that needs no help in the department.

Some will surely disagree. The Diggs catch is completely separate from the Eagles debacle. A great playoff moment can absolutely exist in a vacuum, independent of future outcomes.

You don’t need to make the Final Four to preserve the memory of a first-round buzzer beater. Yankees fans can still happily relive Aaron Boone’s ALCS Game 7 walk-off in 2003 without having to feel the sting from the subsequent World Series loss to the Marlins. I don’t even think its a dealbreaker that the Packers lost the playoff game that Aaron Rodgers sent to overtime with a last-second Hail Mary.

(USA TODAY Sports Images)

But the Vikings aren’t the Packers. They certainly aren’t the Yankees. And they’re not some team that can treat small victories as big ones. While the bad NFL franchises get all the attention for tortured fanbases, the Vikings might have the most tortured of all.

Finishing 1-31 over a two-year stretch is numbing. The Browns fan of the 2000s is immune to pain. It’s far worse to come close and have it taken away than it is to never come close at all. Just ask the Browns fan of the 1980s.

Stefon Diggs will always be a folk hero in Minnesota. The replay of his toe-tapping, sideline-dancing, whiff-causing touchdown catch will be on the highlight reel for decades. But until there’s a Super Bowl parade in downtown Minneapolis, the moment will remain bittersweet. Upon every viewing, the painful memory of 38-7 will jolt a Vikings fan before Diggs crosses the goal line, making them wonder if the joy was really worth the pain.

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